Convicted Innocent

by Meggie Taylor

  * * * * *

  At the end of the ride, David Powell was pushed, pulled, and forcefully coerced down a long flight of steps and along a seemingly endless corridor. The changing echoes of his and his captors’ footfalls told him only that they were passing several points where the path branched off, or opened into rooms of a sort, but they only took a single turn themselves before finally stopping to one side of the passage.

  Metal scraping on metal signaled a heavy latch being pulled; a door grated opened.

  Then David was shoved bodily forward. Blind, still, with his hands bound behind him, he stumbled, skidded on his knees, and then fell headlong, coming to rest on his side some ways from where he started. He was only just sitting up when he heard them drag his friend in and dump him nearby on the floor.

  The door clanged shut, the bolt scraping to with a rude finality.

  While trying to work the gag free, the priest rose unsteadily to his feet and quested about cautiously until he came in contact with the sergeant.

  “Lew?” he said, finally spitting out the musty kerchief.

  To his relief, the policeman sighed.

  “Here, David.” He paused, sighed again, and then went on softly, “Give me a moment and I’ll help you.”

  After a few rustles and what sounded like a tight-lipped exhalation or two – the kind a fellow makes when moving hurts – the bobby stood and started in on the blindfold and the knots at the priest’s wrists.

  “You’ve been awake long?” David asked as his friend worked.

  “A while. Not long enough to know where we are, but at least they didn’t tie me up so well. They hadn’t realized I’d wakened, and I managed to get mostly free just as they locked us in.”

  He paused, sighing yet again as he finished, and gripped David’s shoulder.

  “I’m very sorry,” Lewis said. “I couldn’t see a way to free you before or on the way here, and I should’ve—”

  “—No.” The priest rounded on his friend. The sergeant could be as over-protective as a mother hen at times, and violently self-castigating whenever things went awry.

  “No, Lew.” David repeated firmly. “Six-to-one are nearly impossible odds, even with your god-like pugilism skills.”

  Lew gave him a faint smile. “Seven against two.”

  “I doubt I even gave my opponent a bruise.” His brow furrowed. “You took quite a pounding, though.”

  The sergeant shrugged. Blood had dried in thin streaks on the man’s aquiline face from cuts on his forehead and lips, and bruises were beginning to blossom on his cheekbones and around one of his pale gray eyes. And he was holding himself stiffly in a way that made David think of wrenched or torn muscles.

  Or, Lewis being Lewis, maybe broken bones.

  “Your face is hardly prettier than mine right now, I’ll warrant,” his friend returned dryly. “In a few days, we’ll have colors enough between us to rival your garden.”

  “Will we have a few days?”

  The bleak question was out of the priest’s mouth before he could stop it.

  For a moment, Lew just regarded him quietly, and then squeezed David’s shoulder again. “I’d rather find a way out of here under our own steam than learn what it is these chaps have in store for us. Shall we have a look about?”

  So they did, the room bright enough that they could move about freely. Their explorations didn’t take long.

  Light ghosted in from outside, travelling down deep wells and through a few heavy-paned, dirty glass windows set close to the ceiling; night would likely spell pitch darkness. The room itself had walls and a floor of brick, with a plaster ceiling low enough the sergeant could’ve touched it easily had he but raised his arms, and it smelled like a musty, moldy cellar. About eight strides measured the distance from the door to the windows, and about twenty from side to side. They could hear nothing of what was going on outside the room, whether from their kidnappers (as David supposed they could be called now), or from the world beyond. At one time, some sort of pottery had been stored in there, but now all that remained were large quantities of clay dust and a few empty crates.

  The door was a stout one and securely locked, the hinges on the hallway side. The policeman was having a go at it, trying to fit his fingers between the door and the jamb, when David voiced the other question that had been nagging at him.

  “Why are we here?”

  Lewis paused and pursed his lips thoughtfully.

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing. I’m quite certain you’re only here because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. As for me…. My day began an ordinary one: I certainly had no forewarning this would happen. I left early to give testimony at court and returned home after I finished to fetch a few things before going to the station.” He gave the door a yank. “One of those chaps ran up to me just as I was reaching my flat – said he needed my help and to follow him. I did. He tried to brain me as soon as we’d turned down that alley.”

  The sergeant looked slightly chagrined. “I’d thought there was something amiss about him from the first, but I still went with him.”

  “How did one fellow become four?”

  “Oh. He missed on his first attempt…with a little help from me…so a few of his mates joined in from somewhere nearby. And then you happened upon us.

  “Incidentally,” he went on, an eyebrow quirked at the priest, “why were you in the neighborhood?”

  “I…was actually dropping by to see you – or, rather, leave a message with Mrs. Marsh,” David replied. “I took a shortcut from Commercial. It’s your birthday next week, and best mates have certain responsibilities, et cetera.”

  Lewis chuckled, winced, and returned, “All the more reason to make our bows quickly.”

  “Do you have any idea what they might have been after?” the priest asked, taking a moment to strip out of the cassock the kidnappers had torn to tatters with their attentions. Underneath, his shirtsleeves and trousers were in far better state. “The leader – that blond chap – seemed upset that they’d bungled whatever it was they’d set out to do.”

  “Really?” That caught his friend’s interest.

  “He also emptied your pockets while they were debating what to do with us – killing us seemed only unpopular due to the time and place.”

  David mentioned the items he’d seen the leader take as the sergeant began to go through the pockets on what was left of his uniform tunic (it was missing half its buttons, the collar insignia, and nearly one sleeve at the shoulder, and had several rents in the fabric besides). Ceasing, Lewis leaned against the door with a thoughtful frown.

  “Well, besides a smashed pair of reading glass – blast them! – I still have my watch and a few pence, so if it was a botched mugging….” His voice trailed off and his frown deepened. When he began again, he spoke slowly as if thinking aloud.

  “I can think of only a few reasons why they might’ve attacked a policeman intentionally, especially given what they took. And given what you’ve said, I must presume they intended to knock me down and then clean my pockets in short order, leaving before I wakened. That I fought back and that you intervened ruined their original plan, I think. But what were they after? Why lure me away? Would any policeman have done just as well? And why at just that time and place?”

  “Could it have been something in that little book?” David asked.

  “Perhaps,” the sergeant replied, tugging meditatively at one of the neat sideburns that cut just past the curve of his jaw. “Though it only contains my notes from my work. I jot them down the same as most policemen and then transfer them to official reports at the station.”

  “Anything relevant to ongoing investigations?”

  Lewis shrugged. “Yes. Undoubtedly, yes. But nicking a bobby’s notes won’t halt the legal process. Slow it, maybe, but not stop it. Witnesses can be called upon again, statements taken again, and hard forensic evidence is something else entirely. Crucial testimonies certainly aren’t in my noteboo
k: such witnesses come by the station for more formal reporting. Besides, most of my notes are in a scribbled sort of shorthand. Like as not, it’ll be incomprehensible to anyone else. I can’t think what advantage a criminal might gain by stealing that little book.”

  “Something else they took, then?”

  While his friend considered this in silence, David found himself pacing. His nerves were jittery from the brutality of the assault and kidnapping, and the abrupt cessation of the violence hadn’t curbed the feeling. If anything, the sudden stillness made it worse.

  His head pounded. He wished he could smoke to relieve the tension. Unfortunately, though the kidnappers hadn’t relieved him of his pipe, matches, or tobacco, the violence of his capture had snapped the stem of his pipe into a few useless pieces.

  Thinking about his broken pipe was not helping.

  “Perhaps there was something in one of the letters the postman gave me this morning.” Lew mused at last with a shrug, sitting down on one of the old crates. “I ran into him when I left for the Old Bailey, but hadn’t had a chance to peruse what he gave me yet. Besides my book and the post, the only other things our kidnappers relieved me of were my warrant card – which would be less useful than their false uniforms – and my penknife, whistle, and nightstick. My police helmet, too, I suppose. All told, hardly worth accosting a policeman for. So if our present circumstances aren’t due to one or more of those letters, I haven’t the foggiest.”